The Day After the Verdict

IMG_4482Whitey’s off to Plymouth until just before Thanksgiving for which we should all give thanks that this saga is coming to a close. The date selected for the hearing is November 13 which I imagine was chosen because the New England Patriot’s have an off week just before that so it will be a slow news week.

On that date we’ll hear one or more days of witnesses telling us what we already know; then after these witnesses do their best to scold and humiliate Whitey, he will have one more chance to grab the brass ring on this merry-go-round and tell us something. Will he repeat his lament of not having a fair trial? Will he tell the families of those he murdered that if he had a chance to do it all over again he would do the same things?  Will he tell how much he regrets, not the harm he has caused, but that he was captured?  Will he blame himself for his folly or will like the others offer excuses?

He can say pretty much anything he wants since nothing he says can change the never doubted fact that he will die in prison – actually when you look at it the judge herein should put a black cloth on her head, like I’ve seen the judges do in the British movies where they are sending someone off to be hung, and say, “I hereby sentence you, Mr. Whitey, to be confined to prison until such day as you leave your earthly body behind.” 

As the sun sets on Whitey he rides off westward bound to Colorado, what has he left behind.

Bubbly, who writes for the Wall Street Journal noted, “Vincent Lisi, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Boston division, said the corruption had eroded public faith but that the agency was confident it had been weeded out. “We went through the dark period when there was corruption. We’re beyond it,” he said after the verdict.”  

Ah, we still have the delusional FBI to contend with which thinks its policy of hiding behind “under investigation” and its corrupt ways are behind us. If only it were so but we still await the answers in its two-year investigation of Rossetti, why it failed in the Marathon Terrorist Attack, and why it killed Todashev in Florida and James Lee DiMaggio in Idaho. By the way did you notice when two Boston cops were shot on Dorchester Avenue and the guy who pulled a gun on them killed, there was a deputy superintendent from the Boston police at the scene telling us what happened. Had two FBI agents done the same thing, we’d have to wait months to find out. Agent Lisi should know we’re not buying what he’s selling.

Then we have the John Naimovich introductory story which I will end this Sunday, I hope. If not then perhaps there may be one further post in the series. This will all be gathered together in one long post for anyone interested in the extent to which the FBI and DOJ went to help their informants. I hope soon to shine it up and include the trial testimony in it and put it out in a small book so that John’s unfair plight will be known for all times in case our allegedly new FBI wants to help any more of its informants by framing a state or local cop.

I’ve got to do my Billy Bulger story and hope that too will serve as a little testament to a man who did much good but was smeared with his brother’s sins, unlike any other sibling I’ve ever read about. (Only in Boston?) I have a person who comes here at times who has a wonderful ability to research and write. He has written recently on Billy and I commend his post on his blog. He’s an outsider who comes to the issue with clean hands. Some can point at me and suggest because I’m from the same neighborhood as Billy I can’t be impartial which I suggest would be wrong. I’ve spelled out my full relationship with Billy in my book Don’t Embarrass the Family.

My daughter texted me today and asked: “Is the Verdict a let down?”  I replied: “No. A Relief. Woke up today and almost forgot the jury was still out.” I’ve though about that and realize that as far as the lives of almost all of us, Whitey’s case provided no more than a look at an old criminal but it had no real mystery in its outcome or no real effect on our lives. He was never a person who could conjure up an ounce of sympathy from a jury – he was a brutal gangster blown up way out of proportion to his worth by his ego and our small town big feeling media.

His only importance to me really was as a means to which I could go off into other areas that have always interested me. I’ve written how a lawyer unlike in any other profession could have fallen asleep in the 19th Century and woken up in the 21st Century and continue his (has to be male since I’m not sure we trusted women outside the house back then) practice as if he only slept for a night. The criminal justice system stinks, to put it mildly. I’d like to be a voice for modernizing it even though the judges and others who work in it don’t see how old and decrepit it is.

I’d like to see the number of crimes drastically cut down; as system where a person will not go to jail have his case handled electronically without need for a court appearance; and so many other improvements.

The slow growth of the police state coupled with the slow erosion of our civil rights also attracts my attention as does the over charging by the DOJ of people with some of those outlandish federal crimes with inane punishments  and forfeitures.  There’s much to consider. Things much more important than Whitey.

 

30 Comments

  1. Matt: Don’t know if you remember Congressman Trafficante from Ohio.
    FBI agents targeted him after he entered the names of FBI agents who were on the take in his Congressional District into the Congressional Record. I love the last sentence of his entry. I will try and find the other detailed entry naming the FBI agents collaborating with the Mafia.
    see link for full story
    http://www.november.org/razorwire/rzold/25/page37.html

    Time to investigate the FBI

    U.S. Congressman Santo Trafficante (D-Ohio) asked and was given permission to address the House of Representatives for one minute and to revise and extend his remarks on May 15, 2001.

    “What is the big surprise, Mr. Speaker, in the McVeigh case? The FBI has been hiding evidence for years. Think about it. If you really believe that two Libyan mules blew up Pan Am 103, you are on Prozac.

    “If you really believe that the best FBI sharpshooter just happened to accidentally shoot Mrs. Weaver right between the eyes, you still believe in Mother Goose.

    “Congress, if you believe the Waco jury heard the whole truth from the FBI , you still believe in the Tooth Fairy.

    “And, Congress, if you still believe the propaganda about the assassination of JFK, by God, you still believe that Mae West is a virgin.

    “Beam me up. It is time for an investigation into FBI hiding and concealing exculpatory evidence on criminal defendants.

    “I yield back the FBI corruption from Boston, Massachusetts to Youngstown, Ohio.”

  2. Sorry, not clear.

    No, I’m not suggesting his friendship was wrong; I’m suggesting that here was his friend whose decisions hurt a lot of people much like his brother’s decisions hurt a lot of people.
    In Cardinal Law’s case I read that there were simply no laws against his choices.

    By the time 2004 rolled around (Billy had already appeared before Congress in 2003) and Cardinal Law was given a position in the Vatican, I’d simply stopped trying to figure it out.

    I’m trying to describe why I stopped trying to figure out the truth.
    It didn’t seem possible to get to the bottom of anything.

    Like someone here said, I tried to understand 75 State Street and simply couldn’t get what was going on.

    In came Governors Romney and Fehrnstrom as the great cleaners of our sordid mess. And many of us had the distinct impression we’d been taken TO the cleaners.

    Cut to 2011 and Whitey is caught. Five months later Ireland closes its embassy to the Vatican. This for some reason really wakes me up. Upside down deja vu of Irish and Italian. I start paying attention again and by the time of the trial, I’m on your blog. Your writing about Billy is starting to clarify something.

    I’ve always liked him. So I’ve gone back to revisit what happened.

    I’m thinking it’s possible that a perfect storm of political/religious/criminal waves hit his life, and he did the best he could with what he had.

    I’m awake and interested in his life.

    Is that any better?

    • Firefly:

      Much better and an excellent telling of a journey through these matters that many of us have experienced. If you go back to the beginning of this blog I recommended people read Black Mass which I now find had much fiction in it and would never recommend it to anyone trying to understand what happened. We’ll never really be able to find the total truth but we can at least question some of the things that have been put out there when we look more closely at the motives of the people involved. When we hear a Globe reporter prompted the FBI to investigate something he was writing about and when it concludes other than what he wanted he gets mad at the agent. What was that saying, “don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story.”

      There is much that went on behind the scenes, friendships that protected some people and worked against other people, politicians who were using today’s events to lay a course for future events, old scores being acted upon, the Irish Alzheimer’s of forgetting everything but a grudge; the Sicilian belief that revenge is best served cold; and every other type of pay back you could imagine. It all came to play in Boston in the 1990s and 2000s where people reached back twenty or thirty years to get their pound of flesh. Peeling back the many layers to get to the truth will prove quite impossible but we can at least give it a go.

  3. I’ve got to do my Billy Bulger story and hope that too will serve as a little testament to a man who did much good but was smeared with his brother’s sins, unlike any other sibling I’ve ever read about. (Only in Boston?)
    ——————————–

    Matt,

    I guess, being late to the game, I didn’t realize you were writing a book about Billy Bulger. But now that I know – and you can ask me, Where ya been? – I want to share with you how Billy fell off the map for me. Here’s a short article in Slate Magazine with the title:

    Why Isn’t Boston’s Cardinal Law in Jail?

    http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2002/02/why_isnt_bostons_cardinal_law_in_jail.html

    They were friends. They had lunch together. And when the Church thing blew wide open and the Church was using a young woman as a spokesperson, I couldn’t believe my eyes. I couldn’t believe I was listening to her explain why we weren’t going to get any answers about kids getting raped by priests.

    So when Cardinal Law not only escapes any punishment but is given charge of a Vatican basilica and its priests, well, we’ve got another Whitey.

    And who’s left holding the bag? Billy

    • Firefly:

      I’m in decompression mode so I didn’t quite get your point. Are you suggesting Billy’s friendship with Cardinal Law was wrong; or that somehow he influenced when the legislation making mandatory reporting the law he somehow anticipated the scandal in the Catholic Church and watered down the proposed law to protect Cardinal law, as suggested in the Slate article.

      I find it a stretch to implicate Billy in the Catholic Church’s wrongdoing. I think when it first came out there was a reaction among practicing Catholics that it had no substance. I’m not going to get into that scandal which is far beyond the blog but I don’t thing the Speaker of the House and the President of the Senate and the Governor were in any way responsible for Cardinal Law not going to jail. He was not charged, as far as I know, with even the civil offense so who is to say had there been a criminal offense attached to the statute he would have been charged under that.

  4. Matt: Got an email from my buddy in Quincy
    Ed Tatro. I thought I would pass it on to
    you in light of the old FBI VS new FBI.

    see link for full story

    http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2013/08/case-for-new-autopsy.html

    JFKcountercoup

    Monday, August 12, 2013
    Case for a New Autopsy
    A CASE FOR A NEW AUTOPSY

    By William Kelly

    The victim was murdered, gunned down on the street in broad daylight in front of hundreds of witnesses.

    The cause of death – a bullet to the head, was determined by an autopsy. But after that fact was clearly established, there is complete legal confusion – as the body was improperly removed from the state where the murder occurred before there was a proper forensic autopsy, as required by law. Rather than a proper forensic autopsy – which creates certified evidence that can be used in a court of law, a less thorough regular autopsy was performed, the purpose of which was to determine the cause of death – gunshot to the head.

    But there were three different autopsy reports prepared, the doctors who conducted the autopsy did not talk about the wounds with the emergency room doctors who treated them, and there were two brain exams, one of a brain that was not that of the victim.

    The photos, x-rays and reports of the autopsy could not be introduced as evidence in a court of law because the technicians who took the photos and x-rays could not identify them as the ones they created, so the provenance – the chain of evidence from the scene of the crime to the grave, is broken and lost, much like our history.

    If the victim was an unknown bum found dead in a street gutter and his death was considered suspicious, his remains would be routinely exhumed and given a proper forensic autopsy – one that would produce photos, x-rays and reports that could be introduced as evidence in a court of law.

    But justice has been thwarted in this case because the victim was the President of the United States named John F. Kennedy, and political forces have intervened to prevent a proper legal resolution of the case and keep the truth from being known.

    The details of the original, botched autopsy are well known. When the doctors in the emergency room at Parkland Hospital in Dallas viewed the wounds within minutes after they were inflicted, they only examined the throat and head wounds. The throat wound they assumed, because of its small size, to be one of entrance, and it was enlarged to insert breathing tubes.

    The head wound, as all the Parkland doctors agreed, was a large, grapefruit sized whole in the back of the head, indicating an exit wound, and a flap of bone and flesh on the side of the head above the ear exposed the brain. The large, gaping hole in the back of the President’s head was also confirmed by Secret Service agent Clint Hill, who twice viewed it and confirmed its existence.

    Because the President was lying on his back on the hospital gurney,and the nature of the head wounds precluded his survival, the Parkland doctors didn’t turn him over and didn’t know there was also an entrance wound in the back, about six inches below the neck.

    They did however, find a nearly pristine bullet on a gurney that may have been used by to wheel the President or Texas Governor John Connally into the emergency room.

    The autopsy doctors, when they discovered the entrance wound in the back, found that the bullet only penetrated a few inches, less than a finger, and the bullet probably fell out and was the one discovered on the gurney at Parkland. A four star military general ordered the doctors not to track the full extent of the back wound.

    The next day the autopsy doctors were surprised to learn that the Parkland emergency doctors had enlarged an already existing throat wound – which they believed to be an entrance wound, so it was realized that, even though their conclusion as to the cause of death – gunshot to the head, was correct, the rest of their report was invalid as more information became available from witnesses at Parkland.

    Eventually the official report on the assassination concluded that the back wound was not a superficial, two inch deep wound, but did in fact transit the victim and exited his throat, and then inflicted all of the wounds on Governor Connally in the jump seat in front of the President, creating the “Single Bullet Theory,” which is required if all of the wounds were by one gunman shooting from behind.

    When the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) investigated the murder in the late 1970s and the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) in the 1990s questioned the doctors, photographers and x-ray technicians, they testified that could not recognize their work, sometimes explaining that the photos in evidence could not have been the ones they took because they were of a different type of film and not from the angles of the photos they took.

    In retrospect, everyone with any knowledge of the Bethesda Naval Hospital autopsy agrees that it was a medical and legal abortion, and all of the autopsy reports, exams, x-rays and photos have lost their chain of possession and the provenance necessary for them to be introduced into evidence in a court of law.

    Because the cause of death was a “gunshot to the head,” and therefore a murder, this case certainly meets the “suspicious death” threshold necessary for the law to require a new, proper forensic autopsy, one that would answer all outstanding questions and recreate the lost provenance of the chain of evidence in the case.

    But since the victim is not an ordinary American citizen, but the President of the United States, the laws, rules and standards are considered different – and rather than give the President the best and most thorough autopsy he deserves, observance of the law is relegated to the feelings of the Kennedy family.

    In a press release for the NOVA TV science program Cold Case JFK it is noted that, “Renowned JFK assassination expert and professor John McAdamas weighs in on the findings of the Warren Commission , the deficiencies of the medical and autopsy evidence, and the lack of understanding on the part of the Kennedy camp on the need for a forensic autopsy at the time..”

    Indeed, a forensic autopsy is what is needed, and it is one that can and should be done today, in honor of the president on the fiftieth anniversary of his murder.

    • Msfreeh,

      I’m sure his daughter, nieces and nephews, and their children all appreciate your desire to honor a loved one. Might I suggest something a little easier on the sensibilities perhaps?

    • MS:

      I’m reading the book Road to Dallas. I haven’t come to the assassination yet but all I’ve been reading about to this point is Cubans and Mafia and CIA. The day after JFK died J.Edgar told him men Lee Harvey did it and that was the answer for all time. The American people don’t want to be bothered with the stuff that you seem to like delving into.

  5. The trial of JAMES BULGER was an abomination! It was a consummate waste of time, judicial resources and a lot of hard -earned taxpayer money! We saw 2 months of depraved, base, criminal conduct by individuals who exhibited sub-human behavior and to make it worse, the conduct was condoned and supported by the FBI certainly leading to a justified suspicion of all law enforcement. We saw prosecutors put on a convoluted oft-irrelevant presentation of testimony from a stream of witnesses which was unnecessary. Victims’ families learned nothing from the trial except having to relive the anguish of their losses. BULGER should simply have been sent to FLORIDA or OKLAHOMA to stand trial where the only real appealable issue,that of JUDGE CASPERS refusal to sequester the jury ab initio, would have been remedied in accordance with the edict of the Supreme Court in SHEPPARD v. MAXWELL wherein the court directed that “upon the trial courts perception of massive pre-trial publicity (in this case negative)the Court MUST continue the case until the publicity subsides, change the venue to a place where the publicity is less virulent and MUST sequester the jury

    • Al:

      Nice to her from you. As the “go to” criminal defense lawyer in the Greater Boston area for more years that I like to remember and as one who has tried more cases than all the lawyers who participated in Whitey’s prosecution and defense combined, your insight is appreciated. I assume you are still in the Sunshine State and hope you are well.

      I never could figure out why no change of venue was filed in the case. No arguments were made by defense counsel about the publicity preventing Whitey from getting a fair trial. I’d have to guess that Whitey wanted to stay in Plymouth rather than being in some far off place. The defense also did not seek to sequester the jury until it was time for deliberations which was pretty late.

  6. In an earlier post, I misspelled Fr. Moloney’s name. His correct name is Patrick Moloney, not, Mahoney. The shout-out is still good. Drop him a line, Jim, when you get settled.

  7. I tend to view the relation between organized crime and the FBI the same way as I view the fact that the FBI has Racial Squads in every major American City. That was made clear when retired FBI agent Wesley Swearingen testified on behalf of Geronimo Pratt and helped gain his release from prison after 26 years when the judge determined he had been framed by FBI agents on the San Fransisco FBI Racial Squad. The book Last Man Standing by Olsen provides all the gory details. FBI agents have relied on the Mafia to conduct their business which has included destroying American Unions and carrying out political assassinations.
    No longer a trusted relationship the FBI has turned to the US Military to provide the same services and more. We can continue to practice our poesy by “blogging with Matt” or change our approach to gotcha journalism and realize the only truth is behaviour .How about we take what we have learned about the FBI and create a civilian review police board in Massachusetts with subpoena powers.Whaddya say we leave a legacy
    for the children who will soon follow us ? Anybody see the Wasserman Cartoon about the Bulger Trial today? see link and scroll down to cartoon http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion
    If you don’t like the news go out and make some of your own, eh?

    • MS:

      You make good points but you just can’t go out and start a citizen’s committee with subpoena power. That has to be given by the Legislature and you have to slowly build up the idea among a majority of the people that it is a good idea. There are several ways to do it, one is by writing about it or as you so nicely put it “practice our poesy by “blogging with Matt””. You want action (behavior) not words. That’s understandable but how much action can we have in today’s society. Do you remember how successful the occupy movement was? That was a little bit of behavior that ended badly because the public was on the side of the non-behavorists.

      I like your zeal. But I do find some of the person’s you recommend to us to be out on the fringe. You wrote some time ago about Commissioner Boone and told how you supported him. I was in the Norfolk DA office at the time and Walpole was in our county. Under Boone Walpole became uncontrollable and it seemed we were indicting an inmate every week for murder. He was a disaster for law enforcement and the prisoners. Herein you mention Wesley Swearingen who wrote a book about the FBI that I found somewhat odd when I read it a while ago. I forget exactly what it was but he was not a happy camper.

      The cartoon is good. The problem is the FBI thinks that only applies to the old FBI. They tell us that is the old FBI. But most know the old FBI is today’s FBI.

      • It seems to my family, and most likely other victims as well that unless the “new” FBI can take responsibility for the past bad acts of the “old” FBI, the “new” boss IS the same as the “old” boss.

    • Don’t miss the larger picture: It’s not just corruption at the top and in the mid-levels of the FBI; it’s in the DOJ, judges and prosecutors, who pander to serial killers, acquiesce in their early release, use known perjurers as witnesses, ignored constitutional principles of fairness, equal treatment and justice; and it’s beyond the Justice Department as we’ve seen with the TREASURY (hitting Tea Party groups) and the CIA (fouling up International Health Efforts to vaccinate and eradicate Polio-type diseases.) THE BIG PICTURE is a corrupt over-bloated intrusive imperialistic Federal Government which is trampling our cherished freedoms. I think we treat a disease, after we have diagnosed it correctly. The FEDs have become a malignancy in America. Not the military, not the public health people, not the education, social work, mental health folks (all of whom could use some paring down and fine-tuning) but the other Departments: DOJ, CIA, DIA (civilian wing) Treasury, Homeland Security; The PoliceSTate/SpyState/Neo-ConImperialists, mostly.

      • William:

        You paint with a broad brush. If all those particular departments of the government are corrupt, how can you exclude the other parts. As you know I disagree with your painting so broadly since there is little proof of actual corruption in the government and almost all do their jobs to the best of their abilities in the manner they see best which although it may not be the way you like is certainly far from corrupt. That’s not to say there aren’t a handful of individuals who can smear the reputation of a whole group. When you point too broadly nothing will be done because if you say all the mid level and top level FBI agents or all judges are corrupt then who is there who can root out the corruption?

  8. I just want to say that I’ve really appreciated your point of view on the trial and the history of the case and effort it takes to keep this blog going. If only the reporters who covered trials had either tried a criminal case or served on a jury we’d have a much better understanding of the criminal justice system. I served on a jury a few years ago and it transformed my understanding of how the Constitution protects us from government overreach not matter how well intentioned. In our case the prosecution was honest and had good reason to believe the basic truth of the case but they did not prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. The jury I sat on was pretty sure the guy was guilty but the evidence presented wasn’t convincing enough to us to convict so we acquitted him. That is as it should be. The jury system we have is as good as it gets to discerning the truth and meting out justice. In some ways I think the decision the Bulger jury made proves it again. I was not surprised, having read your blog, as the verdict rolled in.

    I was active in city and state politics in the ’80s and even had a tangential interaction with the FBI in a public corruption case and some ancillary characters from this case. I even once chaired a community meeting in Southie when our group could find no one from within the community brave enough to stand up to the hidden power structure. Whitey’s role was to generate fear, he and his associates were the boogie men that were used to keep people quiet. That’s probably why I’ve been intensely interested in this case.

    I think this trial has been a landmark in understanding the interaction of criminal and official corruption in Boston. I don’t for a second feel it finishes the story. The families affected need some closure and we need to continue to pressure our political structure to reform and root out the corruption evident from this trial. I think what you’ve laid out is well worth discussion and I look forward to your future posts.

    • Grant:

      Thanks for your comment. It is always great to hear from a person who sat on a jury. As I’ve written, the jury in Whitey’s case deserves our praise for doing such a good job. What you note is very true, “Whitey’s role was to generate fear.” He was quite effective in doing it because to most of the people in South Boston it must have seemed that there was no law enforcement agency that was interested in bringing him in.

      I don’t think the corruption was widespread but all it took was a couple of people strategically placed and the efforts against Whitey could be stopped or compromised. What most bothered me about the case was seeing good FBI agents who were like the good neighbors in South Boston. The latter lived in fear of Whitey, the former in fear of stepping on anyone’s toes in the Bureau. The structure of the FBI was set up so that it could be used by someone will ill intent to operate without any interference. It still is. It happened in other cases as with Agent Hanssen.

      I’m pleased you will be coming back here on occasion. There’s much to discuss and room for those outside the mainstream to add to our knowledge and to open this forum up for discussion.

    • Today, the FEDs are the boogie men, trying to silence us, invade our privacy, read our emails, violate our constitutional rights and make us conform to Big Brother’s Orwellian Ethics. I saw Wicked; a great musical, which included as part of the plot FED-like characters who were hell-bent on silencing The Animals. It was evocative of Orwell’s Animal Farm; it was not just a musical about deep, abiding friendships, but about a Zeitgeist which isolates, stigmatizes, and persecutes those who think, act and look different (like “green people”; I thought of Irish people from Southie who the Globe/Feds detest.

  9. What is the purpose of the gag order? Isn’t it to prevent the lawyers from daily comments on the evidence and deny them an opportunity to unfairly influence the jury? Isn’t the spirit of the gag order violated when real or imagined victims denounce the defendant at the end of each day? Does the media coverage of the victims laments have an impact on a unsequestered jury? Possibly. This adds another element to the unfair trial question. It also raises the question of why no change of venue. If this trial took place in Albany NY the result may have been different. Instead of nine findings of NG or not proven you might have twenty five.2. Interesting to note that this was the second Boston jury ( Connolly the first) to completely reject Gucci Martorano’s testimony. All his claims about crash cars were falsehoods. Yet dopey Naimovich lets him off the hook. Gucci murders ( 20 ) twice as many as WB and is free. What about his victims?

    • N:

      1. The trial if tried in Anchorage Alaska would have resulted in the same outcome. Whitey’s lawyers admitted to most of the charges and didn’t contest many of the murders until final argument. The jury did a fine job. No change of venue? Whitey never asked for it.

      2. The jury rejected Martorano where he was not corroborated; it believed him in the Wheeler/Callahan murders. Carmen Ortiz explained they had no choice but to use Martorano and she did not like the deal but the only thing worse was not to deal with him.

      • Martorano and Flemmi, especially, are bold-faced liars and not one word of theirs do I or my friends believe. Too bad the jury gave them any credit. My read is like N’s; the jury once again rejected everything Martorano said, and believed some of Flemmi and Weeks. I’d reject every word of the three as being doubtful!!! by any standard, legal, ethical or otherwise. The only “corroboration” of Martorano’s lies comes from other serial killers and proven liars: Flemmi, Weeks and Nee, and also from Howie Carr, a serial character assassin. (2) John Connolly for saying “If Callahan talks we’ll all be in trouble” in 1982 is serving 40 years in prison, even though Flemmi in 2006 testified under oath (see David Boeri’s columns) that Connolly never did or said anything intending anyone be killed. So, Connolly’s doing 40 years because of Flemmi’s uncorroborated B.S. – – – no one else heard those words invented by Flemmi in 2008— but Weeks, Morris, and Martorano involved in 20 or more murders walk the streets free and clear with Federal bucks in their pockets and Federal protection courtesy of the DOJ. (3) By the way, how often do Weeks, Nee and Martorano report their whereabouts and activities to the FEDs? Or don’t the FEDs care to monitor serial killers prowling our streets?

        • William:

          1. You may not like it but Martorano and Flemmi were Whitey’s partners. How else do you get a guy like Whitey except by making deals with his partners? You have guns, bodies and gangsters hanging off Whitey’s neck, no responsible juror could walk away from that. The jury did reject Martorano where he had no corroboration.

          2. John Connolly had no defenders in this trial. In fact, FBI agents came in and testified they had to hide their files from him because he was compromising their investigations. Whitey’s lawyers said Connolly took huge sums of money. The only one left to defend John Connolly is himself but the evidence against him keeps piling up.

          3. Weeks, Martorano and Nee have no reporting obligations. The federals only cared that they not get into too much new trouble before they testified against Whitey. Now they are free to become FBI informants and to receive the FBI protection like Rossetti received. Keep an eye on Rossetti, if history is any teacher the FBI is working hard to get him out of prison early so he can go back to giving them information.

    • If it was anyplace else, it would have been all guilty. Brennan and Carney thought there might be someone(s) on a local jury who still bought just a little of that old whitey is robin hood bs. And, if you listen to what this juror says, they were right. Some of the women on the jury believe the old he wouldn’t kill a woman line o’ bull.

      http://bcove.me/2u9lk0b3

      Some myths die hard…

      • mrsmithee:

        Thanks for that video. Twice the juror Scott Hotyckey said his opinion was if Whitey “knows” the person who did the murder that was enough for him. He was clearly a guilty all the way guy.
        I didn’t see in the video (which only showed part of the interview) that he refereed to the women on the jury as believing he did not murder the women but I did see the Herald reported that.
        I think overall Hotyckey showed the jury did the job it was supposed to do by reviewing all the evidence, finding the person guilty where there was proof beyond a reasonable doubt, and where some doubt remained gave Whitey, as Hotyckey said, “the benefit of the doubt.” It did what we don’t see done much in today’s society, compromise.

  10. “Vincent Lisi, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Boston division, said the corruption had eroded public faith but that the agency was confident it had been weeded out. “We went through the dark period when there was corruption. We’re beyond it,” he said after the verdict.”

    As they say, confession is good for the soul, and it is also the first step in redemption. BUT, accepting responsibility for past bad acts is also part of the redemption process. The FBI finally admitting that it had a institutional corruption problem does not make the legacy of that corruption disappear. Family’s such as mine who are still suffering today due to the FBI corruption back ‘in the day’, should be able to talk to some responsible party in order that our grievances can be understood and corrected. It is all well and good to make public our situation, but the only ones that can correct it are the ones responsible for it.

    When big industry, like Exxon or BP, finally admit their wrongdoing its the Government that makes them pay restitution. The Government should use the same policy on its own wrongdoing. We just heard from an FBI Secretary who, under orders, testified that she had obstructed justice. She is but one person who has confessed under oath. We are pretty certain that she was not operating in a vacuum. She admitted that she severed under 18 bosses. My family’s fact set shows that most likely our complaints were part of those that were destroyed in the Boston FBI Office. That act had consequences from which my family still suffers. We would welcome Agent Lisi to investigate my family’s complaints before he makes a statement such as the one that has been quoted above.

    • Jean:

      FBI admissions are as good as a writing on water soluble paper after it has been dropped in water.
      All the bad things happened long ago but today’s FBI is brand spanking new and good.